


remember when I was so strange and likeable?

by liadan14



Series: lover with a radar phone [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Abortion, Can be read independently of the rest of the series, Coming Out, Discussion of Abortion, Established Relationship, F/M, I guess minor implied Robin/Carol for about a half a second, M/M, Non-Chronological, POV Outsider, Relationship Reveal, no one likes Reagan in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:06:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22528321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Carol's not really the self-reflexive type. She's not into yoga, or reading, or spending hours "navel-gazing", as her dad calls it. Even she can appreciate the dramatic irony of her life, though; how she'd hissedslutat Nancy Wheeler in the hallway this morning but it's her who's sitting here alone in a bathroom stall half an hour after school has ended, staring at a positive pregnancy test.(Or: Not everyone grows up to be a monster-hunting, babysitting hero, but everyone does grow up.)
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Tommy Hagan/Carol Perkins
Series: lover with a radar phone [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571581
Comments: 46
Kudos: 352





	remember when I was so strange and likeable?

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Non-graphic abortion and discussion thereof. Carol and Tommy are not exactly stellar allies. They're trying, to the best of their abilities, but they're not great at it. They're both also not great people in general. There's a lot of swearing and calling things by insulting names.
> 
> For the purposes of this series, Steve and Tommy graduate in 1985, Robin, Carol, Nancy and Jonathan graduate in 1986. Both Carol and Steve get associate's degrees, which is why they're done with college faster. There are a lot of time jumps back and forth in this, but I trust you guys can figure that stuff out for yourselves.

Carol's not really the self-reflexive type. She's not into yoga, or reading, or spending hours "navel-gazing", as her dad calls it. Even she can appreciate the dramatic irony of her life, though; how she'd hissed _slut_ at Nancy Wheeler in the hallway this morning but it's her who's sitting here alone in a bathroom stall half an hour after school has ended, staring at a positive pregnancy test.

Steve would be disappointed in her. 

For the Nancy thing, not the pregnancy. Steve’s been stupidly protective of Nancy ever since she publicly dumped him and then immediately shacked up with Byers. Carol doesn’t get why and it drives her a little insane.

Steve would probably be disgustingly nice about the pregnancy. Carol can picture it – he’d ask her what she wants, he’d make her tea, he’d tell her to do what feels right to her. He’d probably fuck up the wording a whole bunch of times, but his heart would be in the right place. 

She can’t stomach the thought of going over to his place, where he’ll smell like stale popcorn and the funky A/C at the video rental store he’s still working at even though he definitely doesn’t need a dead-end job like that and could just go work for his dad. She can’t stomach the thought of being asked what she wants.

Billy runs straight into her as she's leaving the bathroom. "Runs" is maybe an overstatement; he's still on crutches after whatever the fuck happened to him over the summer, and he's focused on his feet, not looking where he's going.

"Watch it," Carol snarls.

Billy's lip curls in his usual sneer, and he's about to give back as good as he got, but it's like he stops himself as the words settle on his lips. He swallows heavily, his Adam’s apple jumping. He's thinner than he was, last year. His shirt's buttoned-up all the way. She wants to ask, really, she does, but it's October and if she was going to ask she should have done it in September, when he was still lying in the Harrington's guest bedroom, unable to manage the stairs at his own house. She should have done it in August, when he was still in the hospital. She should have done it in July, when he was drifting in and out of consciousness and she and Tommy drove by the hospital once a week to bring Steve and his hoard of freshmen McDonalds while they waited for Billy to wake up.

It's too late to ask now.

"You alright?" Billy asks.

 _I'm fine, what's it to you_ , is on the tip of her tongue, but she's got the damn test in the back pocket of her favorite jeans because she's too scared to throw it in the trash at school in case someone finds it and the words trap themselves in her throat. 

"Hey," Billy says. "What's wrong?"

Carol uncrosses and recrosses her arms, tears building hot and heavy behind her eyes.

"Can I help you?"

"Drive me to Indianapolis," she says. 

"I gotta take my sister home, first," Billy says.

"Okay."

Max Mayfield is probably Carol's least favorite person in the whole school except Nancy Wheeler. That is to say, Max is Carol's least favorite person who hasn't actively stomped all over the heart of one of her oldest friends. She's way too loud and opinionated for a freshman; she's also too pretty to be exclusively a nerd and all the guys know it. Max will be just like Nancy in a year or two: totally uncaring of all the intricacies of high school status that Carol's worked so hard to come out on top of.

But she's Billy's sister, and she's only fifteen, so Carol guesses it's fine.

"She your girlfriend now?" Max asks, slamming the door on Steve's car shut. Billy's had been totaled in whatever accident he'd been in, and Steve says he doesn't need a car to get to the video store. Carol wonders if Billy’d been driving drunk, on the Fourth of July. It would explain the totaled car and the hospital stay. It wouldn't explain the gaggle of freshmen suddenly following him around like he’s their dad and acting like he didn't spend all of last year getting wasted and fucking Carol's friends.

"In his dreams," Carol tells Max, studying her fingernails.

Billy snorts.

"Whatever," Max says. The drive to the Hargrove's house isn't that long, the way she drums her fingers on the door impatiently sure makes it feel long.

"I'm going to Will's tonight," Max says as they pull up outside.

"We're going to Indianapolis," Billy says. "You got another ride?"

"What's in Indianapolis?"

"You got another ride, Max?"

"I'll take my board." 

"Pick you up tonight at nine," Billy says.

"I can board back."

"No, you fucking can't."

"Ugh," Max says, and stomps off into the house.

Billy sighs.

They drive to the highway in silence.

"You wanna see Tommy?" Billy asks eventually.

Carol almost laughs. 

She's never wanted anything less than to see her boyfriend now. Even if he is in Indianapolis. He graduated last year, with Steve, and unlike Steve, he's doing something with his life. He's studying economics, and he's going to do great.

He only ever comes back on the weekends, though. And it’s fine – he calls her on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and he’s sharing a room with another guy, so Carol’s pretty sure he won’t cheat.

She’s been with him since the seventh grade.

She knows that, even if he does cheat, she’s not going to break up with him.

She never wants him to figure that out. 

She can’t even think about him right now.

Instead of answering Billy, she jabs at the radio until it’s on, switches away from the rock station mostly out of spite. She’s not really picky about music; she’s like Steve. She’d just as soon listen to country as rock, but she knows Billy’s one of those guys who only likes one kind of music, so she takes a bit of personal pleasure in making him listen to Madonna. The tightness of his jaw might make this just a little bit bearable.

They don’t talk anymore on the way there, except for Carol’s shitty directions, which she’s pretty sure make Billy drive around the same three block section of the city four times. She’s only really seen this part of the city with Tommy, on foot.

“Here,” she tells him at last. “Pull in here.” She can feel his eyes on her as he makes the turn and she refuses to look back, to give him the satisfaction of confirming what he knows must be true based on the discrete sign on the door they just drove past.

The car comes to a standstill on the parking lot next to a cream-colored Ford. The sun is in Carol’s eyes.

Billy turns off the motor. The radio sputters out.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” He asks.

Carol wraps her arms around her belly. “Please,” she says.

They sit in the waiting room for a half an hour, until someone can see her. Carol fills out a quiz in the women’s magazine sitting there. Billy looks ridiculously out of place, even with his crutches, piercings all down his ears and faded patches on his jean jacket. He’s the only man there. 

He doesn’t come into the office with her. 

The last time Carol was in an office like this, it was with Mrs. Henderson, the guidance counselor. She’s not a lot like her son in looks, but she’s just as easily excitable, with stacks and stacks of pamphlets. She’d asked, with a wide smile, what Carol _wanted_.

Carol had snapped her gum and shrugged, said, “I dunno,” because she hadn’t wanted to be lame like Nancy, who probably had a color-coded binder full of all her future plans.

This time, there are still pamphlets, but she has to answer the questions.

It takes an hour and a half. 

Billy’s waiting, when she’s done. He’s leaning back against the chair in the waiting room, one of his legs stretched out, the other bouncing up and down impatiently. She wonders if his legs got hurt, too, in July, or if he’s just still using the crutches so he doesn’t jar the massive wound on his ribs too much when he walks.

“Let’s go,” she says.

She drops the pamphlets in a garbage can outside the door.

There’s a plastic bag from a grocery store on the back seat of Steve’s car. Billy must have gotten bored, while she was gone, driven around to find some food. It makes sense. Carol would probably have done the same.

She sits down in the passenger seat, buckles up.

“I got you a milkshake,” Billy says. 

He did. It’s even a decent one, from Dairy Queen, sitting in the cup holder.

Billy reaches behind her, grabs the bag. “I don’t know, um.” He says. “You probably already have all this shit, but—”

He presses the bag into her hands, and she looks inside. Maxi pads, Tylenol, a hot water bottle and the worst, off-brand nacho cheese flavored tortilla chips Carol can never stop herself from eating when she gets high stare back at her.

“I asked the nurse at the desk, y’know, what you would need. I think she thought I was…you know,” Billy says.

Carol bursts into tears.

It’s not cute.

She hasn’t cried in front of anyone but Tommy since she was fourteen. It bursts out of her in wracking sobs, shaking her whole body. She’s noisy and her nose is running and she doesn’t even care.

Billy’s hand settles heavily on her shoulder after a moment, and that just makes her cry more.

It takes her a while to get herself back under control, and even when she does, she’s still shivering with occasional sobs that want to break out.

“You okay to head back?” Billy asks eventually.

“Yeah,” Carol says. She downs two Tylenols with a sip of milkshake and turns the radio back on.

-

Carol calls the Tuesday after starting the job.

She should probably have called earlier. When she applied. At least she’s calling at all, instead of just not saying anything for weeks and months like she would have done a few years ago. 

She hasn’t been in touch that much, she knows, but neither have Billy and Steve. They call up every now and again when they’re coming through Hawkins, and once a year or so, they get wasted at the Harrington’s empty house or on the outlook over the quarry for old time’s sake. They’ve all been busy, with college and college friends and the way life just keeps moving faster the older they all get.

“Yello,” Steve says into the phone after the fourth ring, because he’s the lamest cool person Carol knows.

“Hey, Steve, it’s Carol,” she says, holding the phone between her ear and her shoulder, doodling on a legal pad.

“Oh hey, what’s up?”

“So,” Carol says. “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.”

“Hit me.”

“Well, we’re moving to Chicago.”

“Oh my god, that’s great!” The thing about Steve is that Carol actually believes him. For one thing, he’s always been miserable at faking enthusiasm. Carol remembers his pretending-to-care face from a hundred basketball games from middle school onward, when he’d crowed about getting scholarships or being state champion with Tommy afterwards and he’d been so transparently apathetic Carol had mostly rolled her eyes and stolen his beer. He’d been the same about a lot of the girls he hooked up with before Nancy. For another thing, Steve had actually been really uncomplicated about letting Carol and Tommy back into his life after the mess of his junior year. As long as they weren’t dicks about Nancy, Jonathan, Billy or his herd of freshmen, they’d been good.

The pause goes on just long enough for Steve to ask, “So, uh, the bad news?”

“Right,” Carol says, twirling the cable around her fingers. “I got a job working for your dad.”

“Oh.”

When she was younger, when it was easier to be herself, Carol would have just hung up. Would have been kind of alright with that being it for her friendship with Steve.

“Better you than me,” Steve says eventually. “You know he’s the _worst_ boss.”

Carol hadn’t really understood how generous Steve actually was until she wasn’t friends with him anymore. It had always been kind of a balancing act, for her, being best friends with Steve Harrington and being Tommy’s girlfriend, as well as being Carol Perkins. Carol Perkins didn’t live in a big fancy house like Steve. She didn’t have endless cash to spend, she had to count out her dollars in advance to go bowling, just in case Tommy decided he was into feminism this week so she’d have to pay her own way. Carol Perkins also didn’t live in a two-story house with a garden like Tommy. She didn’t have family dinners and talk to her dad about his construction company or bother her siblings when they were trying to study.

She didn’t hate being Carol Perkins. It was just different. She shared her room with her younger sister because their house only had three rooms and a kitchen, and one of the rooms had to stay free for foster kids. Carol’s mom was there a lot more than Steve’s. She made breakfast in the morning after her shift at the hospital, and dinner in the evening before she left. Carol’s dad used to take the day shift, when they were little, so that one of their parents was always home, but when Carol turned thirteen, he switched to nights, too, because it paid better, working security nights at one of the weird government buildings in Hawkins. It still didn’t pay much; Carol already knew she was going to be able to afford an associate’s degree at best if she didn’t get a scholarship by the time she was a sophomore. 

It was never loud and rambunctious at Carol’s house like it was at Tommy’s, and there were never any parties there, because someone was always trying to sleep. Anyway, CPS could come any time to check up on the foster kids. 

The first time her mom had come home with a skinny black kid with a shaved head and a hunted look on his face, she had said his name was Malcolm and that he didn’t have his own family, so maybe Carol could be his new sister.

Carol had offered to let him pick between _Cheers_ and _Jeopardy_ , but Malcolm hadn’t been interested. That was about as far as she got with Malcolm. He moved out two years later.

The rest of her foster siblings had been pretty much the same, and eventually, Carol understood her parents just wanted the extra money they brought in, they didn’t actually want to deal with the way Malcolm’s room would smell of pot every night like clockwork and the way he didn’t go to school for weeks at a time, or the way he would flinch when anyone came too close to him.

Carol had been too busy trying to rule the school to pay him any mind. She was fourteen when he moved out and she had already gotten to third base with Tommy.

When Steve ditched them for Nancy, it made Carol realize what a luxury it had been, having a friend with a decent car. A friend with an empty house who always wanted you to come over. A friend with a friend with a fake ID who got them booze on the weekend and never asked them to pay for it.

Carol was never going to be the girl who would forgive someone for doing to her what Nancy had done to Steve, but when Billy Hargrove had decided to drag Steve back into her and Tommy’s lives, she’d also pretty firmly decided to stop taking him for granted.

“Listen,” Carol says down the phone line, three hours of freeway still between them. “I’m gonna get paid so much to call you on company time and tell you what a dick he is, and I’m gonna steal all his pens and give them to you.”

Steve laughs, delighted. “Let me know when you’re moving. Billy and I can help out.”

-

Steve throws a party a week after. 

Carol’s whole body goes weak with relief when Billy drives by her and Tommy as they’re leaving the 7-11 on Main Street, yells, “Hey, losers, party at Harrington’s mansion tomorrow night, you in?”

“Yeah we are!” Tommy yells back, arm slung loose over Carol’s shoulders. When he’s gone, Tommy turns to her, asks, “We are, right? Like, that’s okay?”

“Duh, that’s okay,” Carol says. “Always.”

“Right,” Tommy says. “Just, like, I know we don’t see each other that much, now that I’m in Indianapolis.”

“We see each other enough,” Carol says. “Just don’t go screwing some hot college girl behind my back, if I get chlamydia I’m gonna kill you.”

“I would never, I know I’m not gonna do better than you.” He kisses the side of her head, and she pretends to be annoyed he’s messed up her hair so he doesn’t see that she’s about to start crying.

In truth, if it were some other weekend, she’d be clamoring to stay in with him, to have some time alone together. She could get wasted with Billy and Vicky any night of the week; she can’t see Tommy whenever she wants to anymore. She’s not going to see him next weekend because he has midterms and so does she. But this weekend, she’s glad of the excuse.

“Next time you’re here, we’ll stay in together,” she says. “Anyway, you’ve missed Steve, I know you have, you big softy.”

Tommy scoffs, slicking his hair back like he’s so cool. “I have not. Harrington’s a loser to get stuck working at the damn video store.”

“Yeah,” Carol agrees, “but he’s still got the best booze.”

She’d told Tommy she was on her period, earlier, when he’d picked her up at her parents’ house, and it could be true. Things have been kind of messed up, she doesn’t even really know. She blew him right there in the driver’s seat, as consolation. An evening over at Steve’s is a great reason to not go through that again.

They get to Steve’s a couple hours early. It’s a habit, from earlier, when they’d pregame together, feet in the pool, laughing and making fun of everyone else.

When they walk in, Steve is in the middle of a screaming match with Dustin Henderson.

Henderson is _loud_ , and if even Carol thinks so, there’s definitely too much going on there. He’s this unending ball of flailing limbs and hair and loud opinions in the cafeteria and he has so little respect for the fact that Billy is cool and shouldn’t be talking to him that Carol has gotten to know him a lot better than she ever wanted to. It’s not exactly surprising that it’s him who’s campaigning loudly and furiously that Steve should let them stick around for the party.

“It will be such a good learning experience for us,” Dustin says.

“I’m not giving you alcohol.”

“Wouldn’t you rather I have my first experiences with it in a _safe, nurturing_ environment?”

“I swear to god, Dustin,” Steve says, pushing his hand through his hair like the suburban mom he’s going to be one day. “You are such a little shit.”

Billy is sitting at the kitchen table, legs stretched out, crutches leaning against the counter. He takes a sip of his beer, waves Carol and Tommy in. “This might take a while,” he tells them. “Grab a beer.”

“Hargrove,” Tommy says. “Zombie boy.”

Will Byers, sitting on the counter, shifts uncomfortably. 

“Don’t call him that,” Billy says. It sounds mild, but Carol’s heard him sound like that before absolutely whaling on a guy, so.

Tommy shrugs, says, “Okay, long as he’s not a creep like his brother.”

Carol steps on his foot a little. “So,” she says brightly. “What’s going on out there? Is Henderson Steve’s new adopted son or something?”

Billy snorts.

Will looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“Steeeeve,” Carol imitates. “Gimme a beer, c’moooon!”

Will laughs. He turns aside, trying to hide it, but it’s too late, Carol knows he’s secretly kind of cool. Her suspicion is confirmed when he takes a swig from the beer he’s been hiding behind his back when Billy’s not watching.

In the end, Henderson parleys himself into being allowed to stay until nine thirty and drink a single beer. By the time they leave, Will Byers has drunk three that Carol is aware of.

She’s almost glad when Robin Buckley shows up with a sixpack of hard cider, even if she does basically consist of freckles and plays the tuba like a fucking dork. Tommy’s been talking about Indianapolis. He keeps talking about how cool the parties are, and Carol can just tell that all three of the guys are dying to talk about the college girls at the college parties. Billy keeps sneaking looks at Steve while Tommy talks, and Tommy keeps winking at Steve and Billy, and Steve won’t look at anybody, and it’s just super awkward.

So, when Robin appears, Carol grabs her by the elbow and says, “C’mon, I need help doing my makeup,” and drags her to the upstairs bathroom.

“What the fuck,” Robin says. “Also, ow.”

“They wanted to talk about boy shit,” Carol says. “C’mon, let’s get high and let them.”

Robin blinks slowly, then says, “Whatever.”

Carol still remembers how to prop a box of Steve’s mom’s sanitary pads in the window and blow the smoke out, towards the woods, so the house doesn’t smell like weed. Robin coughs up about a lung and half after the first drag she takes from the joint and ruins the whole concept.

“Aw, first time?” Carol asks smugly, inhaling and holding her puff like a pro.

“Shut up,” Robin croaks.

They give it a good solid half an hour, and when they get back downstairs, they’re pretty giggly and the boys are all wasted. Carol heaves an internal sigh of relief. Tommy can’t get it up drunk and he’s too lazy hungover to want sex.

-

When they’ve been in Chicago a week, Steve and Billy invite them over for dinner.

It’s really weird.

Carol hasn’t actually hung out with them sober since they all ate lunch in the cafeteria at Hawkins High. 

It’s kind of okay, too, though. The food’s really good, which she’d been worried about. And their apartment isn’t half bad – there’s a patch of damp in one corner of the bathroom, but otherwise, it’s clean and comfortable.

Still, it’s pretty clear none of them know how to behave. Tommy’s rubbing his hands over the thighs of his jeans for about the fiftieth time since they got here and besides, “So how are you guys settling in?” Steve has yet to come up with another opener.

There’s a long, awkward pause, and the radio on the windowsill sputters out some news item about the stock market and Reaganomics.

“Fucking Reagan,” Tommy mutters, and Carol rolls her eyes in preparation. She’s pretty sure she’s heard every possible way for Tommy to express that _Reagan was bad for business, actually, dad_ during the last three Christmases at his house, and she knows for a fact that Steve’s parents had a Reagan sign up in their yard in ’84, too.

She’s a little surprised, when both Billy and Steve raise their beers. “Fuck Reagan,” they say in unison, clink their beers together, and drink.

Steve bursts out laughing around his mouthful, swallows heavily. “Sorry, guys,” he says. “It’s, like, a thing.”

“It’s a drinking game,” Billy says. He looks a lot less dangerous, now, with his hair cut shorter and no holes in his jeans. They’re still sinfully tight. Carol might be very firmly taken, but she’s got eyes. “Whenever someone mentions Reagan…”

Tommy laughs, delighted. “Oh man, you just saved my Christmas. My old man’s _still_ a supporter, even though the tax cuts are fucking killing his business.”

“And the way he treats immigrants is pretty shit. And poor people. And gay people.” Billy’s eyes are boring into Tommy now, apparently waiting for something.

Tommy doesn’t seem to notice, he just shrugs. “Honestly, imagine any Republican pretending to care about gay people. Be like taking Carol to a football game.”

“Hey,” Carol says. “I tried.”

“Yeah, once.”

“It’s fucking boring. Why watch a sport that stops every three seconds?”

Billy grins, a little. “She’s got you there.” 

Maybe Tommy passed the test.

Carol wonders if she has.

-

Buckley becomes Carol’s best party friend. It’s not exactly intentional, but Tommy gets kind of weird about it when Carol hangs out with Billy and Steve too much alone (as if Carol would go there, honestly. Billy probably has some gross scars and she’s never going to suck the same dick as Nancy Wheeler for as long as she lives). Plus, Buckley’s always around them. She refuses to sit at Carol and Billy’s table at school, sticking to her band friends and pretending Billy didn’t hold her hair back the first time she ever drank too much and threw up from it just last weekend.

It’s whatever, Carol’s not exactly inviting her over.

Buckley’s pretty dependable, though. She’s not a flake, like Tina, and ever since Vicky got a boyfriend she’s been pretty lame. Buckley will actually show up when she said she would, she’ll do shots and smoke up with Carol, and when Carol’s had too much, she won’t leave Carol alone. Used to be, only Tommy would do that, and only when he wasn’t too drunk himself.

They’re sitting on the lounge chairs by Steve’s pool, high and dizzy, and Robin’s shoving handfuls of cheese puffs into her mouth. “Want some?” She asks, chewing.

“Nah,” Carol says, even though she’s fucking starving. “Gotta watch my weight.”

Robin snorts, spraying some cheese crumbs on the pool’s surface.

“Tommy’s coming home for Christmas soon,” Carol says.

“Yeah, so?”

“So, last time he was here he said I was getting chubby,” Carol says. Last time he had been here had been Thanksgiving. She’d been binge-eating junk food, trying to forget that her parents basically decided to cancel the holiday and just have a normal dinner as a family before they both headed off to work. She’d been trying to forget a lot of other things, too, trying to make looking at Tommy, kissing him, being with him, hurt her a little less.

“Fuck him,” Robin says.

Carol doesn’t answer.

“No, but seriously, you’re, like, okay,” Robin says.

“Wow,” Carol says, deadpan. “Well, now my life is complete.”

“Shut up. I mean, why do you let that guy tell you anything?”

“’Cause I love him,” Carol mumbles.

Robin doesn’t say anything. She throws a cheese puff in the pool, watches it float and fill with chlorinated water till it starts to dissolve.

Carol squirms, till she’s on her side, staring at Robin. “I’ve been with him for six years,” she says. “I know everything about him that matters. He knows pretty much everything about me. His mom gets me birthday presents. I’m never gonna,” her breath hitches, embarrassingly, tears building hot and tight behind her eyes. “I’m never gonna find that with someone else. He’s kind of a jerk, but I’m kind of a jerk, too, and I don’t wanna start all over with someone else. It’s so hard to let someone in like that. I can’t start all over.”

Robin looks over at her, and her expression softens. “I get that,” she says. “Sounds nice. Having someone in your corner like that.”

Carol takes a deep breath, smells the fake cheese stuff they put on snack foods. She remembers, just for a second, sitting in Steve’s car with Billy, driving in silence, eating chips straight out of the bag because it was better than talking about what she had just done.

She wishes she could tell Tommy about it. She wishes everything she just said about him were true.

“Hey,” Robin says. “You kinda look like you need a hug.”

“Ugh,” Carol says.

“Yeah, I agree. Want me to find Steve to hug you?”

“Do I look like I wanna talk about my feelings more?” Carol sniffs, rubs under her eyes so her mascara doesn’t run down her face.

Robin laughs. 

“What about you, anyway?” Carol asks. “There must be some guy.”

“Noooo,” Robin says, looking back at the pool. “No guys for Robin.”

“Aw, c’mon. You’re obviously too mean for Steve, but what about Billy? You guys are all…close?”

Robin chokes. “Carol, no,” she says.

“Why not?”

“So not into Billy’s whole…everything.”

“What, you’re not into hot guys?”

“Nope.”

“Fine,” Carol says. “How about Keith? He’s always hanging around you and he’s, like, the opposite of hot.”

“Carol,” Robin says, “you are the worst.”

-

Robin as an adult is not actually much different than Carol remembers her from high school. By which Carol means, she still spends a lot of time getting wasted at Steve and Billy’s place and she’s still a prissy little bitch.

The difference is mostly that she has about four more piercings in each ear and a rainbow flag sewn onto her backpack.

It’s pretty clear that Carol wasn’t supposed to run into Robin – she’d stopped by unannounced to give back a casserole dish that Steve brought over a few weeks ago, and also to tell him about how much of a shitstain his dad is being to his PA since she stopped sleeping with him, but Steve had been trying to get her back out the door since she got there. It’s got Carol pretty alert – she knows Steve always wants to hear about his dad being a dick.

So, she doesn’t let Steve push her out the door, and when Robin shows up twenty minutes later begging for a drink, Carol’s honestly surprised about how deeply happy she is to see her. She even gives Robin a hug.

“I heard you moved to town,” Robin says.

“You should have _told me_ you lived here, too,” Carol says. “Would have saved me from hanging out with Tommy, Steve and Billy by myself.”

“Just like old times,” Robin says.

“Yeah.”

Carol’s just finished washing her hands after using the bathroom when she hears Robin in the kitchen, telling Steve, “Look, I’m not gonna be forced back into the closet because of a fucking high school reunion, okay? If that’s what you guys wanna do here, I’m out.”

“No one’s forcing anyone anywhere, Rob.” Steve sounds exasperated, like his mom when Carol and Tommy used to help Steve build blanket forts in her magazine-worthy living room. “Carol’s okay, you guys used to be friends, didn’t you?”

“In as much as you can be friends with someone who’ll drop you the second they actually know you,” Robin says.

Carol hates that that hurts her, now. She remembers who she used to be, with Steve and Tommy, sophomore year of high school. Even junior year. It wouldn’t have stung, then. She’d have been fine.

It stings now.

Robin had been a good friend when Carol had been at maybe the worst point in her life. To know that Robin never felt the same…well, Carol’s had worse. Still, she’s determined to prove Robin wrong. To be nice, just to show Robin up.

She goes back out to the kitchen. “Hey,” she says. “It’s been so good to see you guys. You should all come over some time soon, Tommy and I have something to celebrate. It would be good to do it with friends.”

Robin’s lips are drawn into a thin, tight line. “Carol,” she says. “I’m a lesbian.”

Carol blinks at her. “Okay,” she says. “Do you wanna come over some time or not?”

“Uh, sure?”

“Great. I’ll call Stevie with the details.”

She feels triumphant when she leaves Steve and Billy’s apartment, because she’s definitely proved she’s better. It’s only on the train ride home that she considers what Robin actually said. It’s not like it’s a big deal. Carol might’ve made her life hell for it in high school, but she knew some girls, in college, who were like that, and they were pretty cool. Less uptight than a lot of the girls Carol was supposed to be friends with, the protestant girls who’d been dating their boyfriends since high school. The girls who were supposed to be like her, but who wouldn't talk about sex, who wouldn't drink more than two drinks because it made them feel to weird, who thought pot was actually a scary drug.

Carol thinks back to sitting by Steve’s pool with Robin, asking her about boys. She feels kind of like an idiot in retrospect, but that’s nothing new. She wonders if Robin ever wanted to kiss her.

It doesn’t really matter. 

-

Tommy had proposed to her over his first Spring Break from college. He’d been saving up for the ring all year, and it was pretty nice. Then again, Carol never buys herself jewelry, she’s only ever really gotten gifts from her parents and then from Tommy. He had meant to wait until she graduated, he said, but they’d had this huge fight about how she was hanging out with Steve and Billy too much and he wouldn’t just _believe_ her when she told him she wasn’t fucking either of them.

He’d proposed as an apology.

She’d said yes, of course.

She’d said yes, and the day school starts again, she storms into the guidance counselor’s office when she’s supposed to be in Chemistry and sits down across from her.

“I want a family,” she says. 

Mrs. Henderson looks up, waiting for her to continue. 

“I want a family, and I want a job that lets me have that,” she says. “I don’t want night shifts, I want to be able to go to work in the morning and leave in time to pick my kids up from school. I want to be able to take time off if they’re sick, and I want to earn well enough that I can take care of them if I ever – if things don’t work out and I end up a single mom.”

Mrs. Henderson smiles, wide, the way she does at her stupid son when she tells him she loves him before school every morning even though they’re in the _same damn building_ all day. Carol’s so jealous she could scream, and she doesn’t even know who she’s jealous of.

“I think we can work with that,” Mrs. Henderson says.

-

It takes Carol an embarrassingly long time to realize. 

They’re all at her and Tommy’s place, their little house in the suburbs of Chicago, toasting to the wedding she and Tommy finally set a date for, two years after he proposed. It really is like a high school reunion every time she sees Steve and Billy and Robin, and she even got Vicky to come over from Indianapolis for the occasion. It feels right, to celebrate this with them. Especially because they don’t get to be in the wedding, Tommy’s stupid sister has to be her maid of honor.

Steve and Billy are arguing, sat diagonally across from each other at the living room table.

“We don’t _need_ a bigger place,” Billy is saying. “We have plenty of room!”

“But we could have more room!”

“What for? For all your moneybags, rich boy?”

“Oh, shut up,” Steve says, legitimately annoyed. “What if we want, like, a dog or something?”

Billy stares at him, shocked. He takes a long pull of his beer. “Yeah,” he says, sounding strangely rough. “I guess maybe we could get a dog at some point.”

“That’s all I’m asking for,” Steve says. 

Carol wonders, for half a second, if they’re going to live together forever and keep their weird bachelor pad, before it clicks in her head and she realizes they’ve been a couple for years and she’s just been too dumb to see it.

“Did you know Steve and Billy are a couple?” She asks Tommy, later on, when they’re in bed and the lights are out and Vicky is snoring in the guest room.

“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Duh.”

“Seriously? Why didn’t you ever tell me?” She hits him lightly on the arm.

Tommy shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “They’ve been living together for kind of a long time.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “I just didn’t put it together.”

“Guess you just aren’t as smart as me.”

She whacks him with the pillows a couple times to make him be less of a smug asshole. “How did you even find out?”

Tommy props himself up on his elbow, looks over at her. “Remember when we had that big fight, about how I thought you were screwing one of them?”

“Duh.” She waves the ring on her finger in his face.

“I was so pissed off, afterwards, I went over to Steve’s house. I thought I was gonna finally actually beat him up or something.”

Carol laughs.

“Hey!”

“Go on, baby. Tell me how you were gonna beat up the literal police officer.”

“He wasn’t with the police then,” Tommy grumbles. “He was just a dickhead like the rest of us. Anyway, I came in through the woods into his backyard, I was gonna, like, ninja my way into the house, and then I saw him and Billy sucking face on the living room couch through the window.”

After a moment, Carol asks, “And then?”

Tommy shrugs. “Then, I figured I was pretty wrong about you cheating with one of them and I went back and asked you to marry me.”

“Oh.”

Neither of them says anything for a while.

“You don’t mind?” Carol asks him eventually. 

“It’s weird,” Tommy says. “I mean, Harrington used to bang a different chick every weekend. So did Hargrove. But.” He sighs. “I didn’t really like not being friends with Steve. So I figured, whatever, it’s none of my business.”

“Oh,” Carol says again.

“Seriously, you just figured it out?”

“Shut up.”

They lie next to each other, just breathing for a while.

Finally, Carol says, “Hey, Tommy, I need to tell you something.”

“Hmm?” He must be already almost asleep, but Carol’s never going to have the nerve again.

“I got an abortion.”

She’s entirely still after she says it, waiting for him to get up, to leave, to tell her he hates her.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything at all.

“It was in the fall of my senior year,” she says, because someone needs to keep talking. “You had just left for college. I used up all my savings. But I didn’t think we were…ready, and I didn’t want to be that girl who got married at eighteen and popped out kids she was too poor to raise properly.”

Tommy’s throat clicks, like he had his mouth open and had to swallow around his dried-out tonsils.

“Billy drove me there,” she continues. “I think he kind of kept an eye on me after. That’s why we were so close, that year.”

“Do you want kids?” Tommy asks, blankly. He’s angry, she can tell.

“I want kids,” she says.

“Then why?”

She’s starting to cry. She hates that, she can never explain herself when she starts crying. All their worst fights start like this. 

“I was scared,” she says. “I wasn’t ready. I want…I hated that my parents were never around and never had any money. I tried _so hard_ to be better. I wanted…I want to be a mom, you know? Like your mom is. I wanna be there. I wanna cut the dumb crusts off gross sandwiches. I wanna take them to the movies and the pool and stuff. I wanna pick them up from school and take them to fucking soccer practice. You don’t get that if you have kids when you’re eighteen and dirt broke. And I needed you to know before you…before you marry me. I can’t do this if you’re gonna hate me for it.”

“I don’t hate you,” he says automatically, a response born from a thousand fights. “I wish you’d told me.”

“I was scared you were gonna dump me for some hot college girl.”

“Christ.” He sits up. “I always thought you were kidding about that.”

“No.”

“Christ,” he repeats.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She hates the way it tastes on her tongue.

“No,” he says. “I mean, I get it. I wouldn’t have wanted you to do it.”

Carol feels a new wave of tears spill over. “If you had asked me not to, I wouldn’t have done it,” she says. “I wanted that baby so bad.”

“But—”

“I wanted that baby so bad, but I could never have given it the kind of life I wanted it to have.” She can’t stop the tremble in her voice, how badly her feelings are spilling over into her words. This is usually when Tommy tells her he can’t talk to her when she’s like this and they both have to take a step back and wait an hour or two to talk it out.

This time, he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close.

“I don’t ever want to not know this shit,” he says against her hair.

“I don’t ever want to do it again,” she says.

“You won’t have to.”

-

When Carol’s twelve weeks along and they’re as sure as they can be she’s not going to lose the baby, they call Billy and ask him to be godfather.

**Author's Note:**

> So, there we go. The hardest fic in this series to write by far. Also the part that I am the most nervous about, because what fucking business do I have messing with these themes? Really, though, to me a lot of this is just about how in this series there's a lot of couples who get together young and stay together forever, and that's not easy and it's not perfect and Carol was, for me, a really interesting person to look at that through.
> 
> There's a [timeline](https://bewires.tumblr.com/post/190383828850/timeline-for-some-dumb-fanfiction) for this series on my tumblr in case you, like me, have a hard time figuring out when we are.
> 
> The title is from "Back in Your Head" by Tegan and Sara.


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